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Sustainability of Engineered Rivers in Arid Lands

Modern river engineering is just a century old. It started in two rivers: Nile and Rio Grande. British engineers closed the first Aswan Dam in 1902. The U.S. Corps of Engineers closed Elephant Dam, an hour’s drive north of El Paso, Texas, in 1916. Engineered rivers are the lifeblood of irrigated agriculture, produce electricity and supply water for industry and cities in the river basins. By now most large rivers in the world have been engineered—equipped with multiple dams, bypass canals, and distribution channels. River engineering brings large benefits to farmers and cities.

It also creates risks. In this project we study the most important ones in order to find out how the rivers will do in 2040 and 2060. We look at both physical and social drivers of change: climate change/variation, reservoir sedimentation, surface-to-groundwater connection, and environmental flow on nature’s side; population and land use changes, as well as options for more efficient water use and better policies, on the social side.

SERIDAS stands for Sustainability of Engineered Rivers in Arid Lands. We assembled a team of river experts to project water supply and demand for a group of heavily engineered rivers worldwide. We also invited a second group of team members who can advise the river experts on how to deal with future risks.

How we got started: Rio Grande/Río Bravo

Back in the 1990s EPA and NSF ran a program called “Science to produce results”. HARC received a grant to work with colleagues from Mexico to study the future of the Rio Grande/Río Bravo. We spent several years on the project and found that the river would be dramatically changed by 2030. Most importantly, there would be 1/3 less river water:

Early impact of climate change is already measurable: the mountain snowpack which is responsible for the bulk of river water is diminishing

The basin population will double by 2030 requiring a larger share of river water

Environmental flow, already low, will decline even more

There was one good piece of news: we found that farmers might be able to maintain the value of current harvests while using less water—provided they adopted more efficient irrigation methods and shifted to less water demanding crops. And both agriculture and cities could make much progress with water conservation.

As the project unfolds we will look for similarities and differences between the rivers and their basins. We are particularly interested to find out how river stakeholders and managers are preparing for the future. And whether different management regimes—multi-state, international or regional— make a difference in being pro-active.

Project Maps

2040 and 2060 Scenarios

Scenarios describe plausible futures. All of our scenarios include projections for reservoir sedimentation, environmental flow and changes in population and land use. In addition to those variables 2040 and 2060 scenarios use data and projections as follows:

Water Budgets

Water budgets account for water supply and demand. They are the main tools for the quantitative assessment of past, current and future hydrological conditions in each river. We will construct water budgets for the past (1970, 1990, 2010) and the future (2040 and 2060). There will be three water budgets each for 2040 and 2060, using Scenarios A, B and C.

Sustainability Assessment

We will use the water budget results to assess likely river and basin conditions in 2040 and 2060. We will use these criteria to determine whether river basins will be more or less sustainable than now: agricultural productivity, economic well-being of the basin population, ecological health and sound basin management. In a final step we will take all of SERIDAS basins together and ask what the future holds for global food security.

Project Announcements

SERIDAS team members are writing a book. The book proposal is pending at Cambridge University Press. Following highly favorable review by the Cambridge editor it is now going through the customary review by outside experts.

HARC's Stephanie Glenn, HARC fellow Jurgen Schmandt, George Ward (UT) and Michael Cohen (CO) will be traveling to Germany to hold a symposium, “Sustainability of Engineered Rivers in Arid Lands”, in Hannover, Germany in June 2015.

The Sustainability of Engineered Rivers in Arid Lands (SERIDAS) project examines the future of ten engineered rivers in arid lands. It identifies challenges the rivers face and offers recommendations on how to respond. The project team asks: How sustainable are engineered rivers in arid lands?

The TX-PACE Energy and Emissions Tracker was created in partnership with the Texas PACE Authority, the state-wide administrator of TX-PACE. This interactive tool allows viewers to see how TX-PACE projects are reducing energy and water consumption, lowering emissions, and providing significant economic benefits. The status of TX-PACE can be reviewed for each region or at the state-wide level.

The purpose of this project was to conduct data collection, analysis and modeling for a study of the storm surge and wave impacts on land in Harris County around Galveston Bay due to Hurricane Ike in 2008 and effective ways to use breakwater islands to mitigate the effects.